The Elf



Nick opens up an old, wooden chest and discovers an elf doll holding a knife. He also discovers a “naughty” list, with the names of his fiance and other family members written on it.  Oh, and his wrist suddenly ends up branded with a strange mark by some unseen force. But instead of running screaming into the street like a normal person, Nick initially tries to simply ignore the clearly evil thing he’s just unwittingly unleashed. But once he and his fiance get back home and Nick discovers that the creepy elf doll he left behind has somehow followed him home, he quickly realizes that the elf isn’t a problem he can simply ignore. A fact that becomes painfully obvious when his fiance’s family shows up and the murderous little doll suddenly goes on a killing spree.



Excuse me for a second, won’t you…

ARHG!!!

Thank you, I just needed to get that out of the way.

Anyway, I initially decided to put this on because I thought it would be fun to watch something a little different this year. I mean, I’ve also got a ton of Santa slashers on my watchlist that I could have chosen instead. But clearly, much to the dismay of the spirit of Mickey Rooney, those kinds of films are a dime a dozen. Hell, even Krampus movies are all over the place these days, and at this point, frankly, I’m sick of it. It’s all overdone. So when I came across this film I thought, “Ah, a killer elf movie. Finally, something a little different.” I was so happy in fact, that I wasn’t even concerned that the whole film is essentially a themed killer doll movie. But holy crap, did I misjudge. Because – And I don’t say this lightly – this film is bad. Really, the only nice thing I can think to say about it is that it has some decent camerawork. But other than that? No. Just no. Consider this write-up a testament of why you shouldn’t watch it, and revel in my dismay of not having chosen one of the cheap Santa slashers to watch instead. Because every one of those that I’ve seen so far has been leagues better than this film.


I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I’m sticking with Killer St. Nick.

Okay, for starters, THIS is the exact summary of the film that I read before I watched it.

“After inheriting a toy shop, Nick discovers an elf doll with a naughty list of his family’s names, triggering a supernatural Christmas killing spree.”

You got that? Good. Because that summary does a better job explaining the plot of the movie than the actual movie manages to do in its whole 90 minute runtime. When we first see Nick and his gal-pal they are walking into a shop. But there are no toys anywhere to be seen. What there is, is a bunch of lamps, and furniture, and vases, and trinkets behind glass cabinets, and anyone with an IQ over 2 can tell that this is your standard friggin’ Antique Store, the kind that you can find in just about any city anywhere. Not that you even know that this is supposed to be a toy shop, because at no point does the film ever bother to tell you where they are, or even who they are, let alone that Nick has apparently inherited this place. For all we know the two of them are just doing some light antique browsing while on vacation.

Which brings us to Film Issue #1: Rarely do you ever have any idea of what the hell is going on in this movie. Plot points are poorly explained, if they’re explained at all. And even when they are explained, most of the time they make NO sense. For instance, oh, great, the Elf-Demon-Thing is working off a “naughty” list. Fabulous. So…how did any of these people end up on this list? Were any of them even naughty? Cause the explanation you gave me sounds like their inclusion was just sorta random. But if it was, then why bother calling it the “naughty” list at all? Just to tie it to the holidays? That’s…really dumb. And giving dumb as shit explanations like that is basically how the WHOLE film goes about its business. Meaning this movie doesn’t just have plot holes, it has plot craters caused by giant plot asteroids, the size of which were large enough to potentially cause several mass extinction events.


WTF? Is this supposed to be the elf? And if it is, why did we never see it like that again? ARGH!

And if the movie had actually cared enough to make ME care enough about the story, or even any of the people involved in it, I might find all that lack of coherent explanation supremely annoying. But I really don’t. Why? Because the movie never bothered to get me to care about anything that was going on.

Part of the reason for that is that the film’s pacing royally sucks. The whole thing is so slow that it seems to take forever for anything to happen. People walk slow. People explain things slow. Hell, even when the Elf is in the middle of stalking and killing someone, half the time those scenes are so stretched out that even those moments feel slow. If it weren’t such an annoying feature I might actually be impressed with their ability to make even the exciting moments feel painfully dull.


Could you please just, oh, I don’t know, stop standing there like a weirdo and stab him or something already?

And the characters? Ugh. There’s not a likable one in the bunch. If they’re not annoying, they’re boring. And if they’re not boring, they’re flat. So flat, in fact, that a few of them didn’t even look like they wanted to be there, and I question whether some of them were doing this movie against their will (and the dialogue sure as hell didn’t help). And if they were, that would make sense, because most of them didn’t seem to care what was going on around them half the time.

When Nick first finds the Elf-Demon-Thing in the trunk, he goes through a series of events, each one of which would have made a saner man run for the hills, yet he seems oddly unaffected by it. First, the trunk that the Evil Elf is in only opens after he reads an inscription. That would have made me leave right there. But does Nick do that? No. He soldiers on like the dingus he is. Then he pulls out a piece of cloth with some sort of contract on it and reads it out loud, because I guess he never watched Evil Dead before. Then he pulls out the Elf with a knife. An old radio suddenly starts to play a creepy song. It then begins SNOWING INDOORS. Again, this would be a GREAT time to stop, but does he? No, of course not. He wisely puts the creepy doll down, but then picks the list back up, apparently fulfilling an ancient, unwritten contract, because his arm is then branded by an unseen force, and the snow finally stops. And then he just takes some meds and…leaves. Doesn’t run screaming from the room. Doesn’t even seem surprised. Just… leaves. And at this point even a non believer like me, who has no connection whatsoever to Catholicism, is wondering why he’s not running off to find a fucking Priest, because seriously, WTF was all that and why do you seem so unconcerned?



But it turns out that ‘s just par for the course for this film. Because nobody really seems to give much of a shit in this movie. I mean, there’s the fiance’s dad, lying on the floor, a bloody heap in her arms. Does it look like she cares? …Eh, not really. Oops. Looks like he just died. Anything yet?…. Wow, not even a tear, huh? Guess a cry of anguish would be too much to ask then. Because, clearly, she doesn’t really care. And if she doesn’t care, you sure as shit won’t either. And you won’t care about Nick. Or the mom. Or the brother. And you especially won’t care about the sister, because I think even the damn film straight-up forgot about her ass at some point. With 24 minutes left in the movie that chick just casually bounces by walking out the back door, never to be seen or heard from again. Did she get away? Did the Elf get her? Did she fall in a ditch and die of exposure!? WHO CARES! I don’t! Shit, I forgot about her myself until I was taking screenshots for this write-up! And I doubt the movie even knows! Because nobody even acknowledged her after she disappeared. So…fuck it, I guess. She didn’t add anything to the film anyway.

Which of course leads me to Film Issue #2: For a movie about a killer elf doll, it’s boring as hell.


You gotta love her face in the background there. Clearly neither one of them knew how to react here.

Finally, there’s Film Issue #3: The crappy effects.

Some of what’s here is okay, and about what you would expect from a cruddy, low-budget horror movie. Shadows moving just within your peripheral vision. Strange noises coming from just off screen. A knife being shoved through a door. Blood smears on various parts of the body. You know, standard stuff.

But then the CGI kicks in and…. I’ll give them a modicum of credit in realizing that their full CGI Elf looked like absolute garbage, and thus only showing it briefly a couple of times. But those times were still more than enough to know that it was garbage. Thankfully though it looks like they used most of their computer effects budget on the lousy elf, so we aren’t forced to see a lot of ridiculous CGI blood splatters. But considering how crappy the rest of the film is, that small blessing doesn’t amount to much.


The least you could have done was darken the eyes so that it would match the doll.

Honestly, the only nice thing I have to say about The Elf is that the concept sounded fun. Oh, and they knew how to light their scenes so you can see what’s happening in them. But the rest of the execution? Ooof. I think they failed on just about every basic level. The characters are boring, and don’t behave or react like actual human beings. The plot and motives going on are quite often incomprehensible. The dialogue is atrocious. The acting is equally as bad. The effects are either sucky or non-existent. It’s just…bad. And not even so bad that it rolls back around on itself to become “ha ha” bad in a fun kind of way. It’s the boring, poorly thought out kind of bad. The kind of bad that has no heart in it, and you wouldn’t be surprised to find out that it was done as some cheap tax write-off, or someone making a bet about how anyone could make a successful horror movie, no matter how crappy it was. Except I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a tax write-off, because it looks like the director has written and directed a lot of other, equally crap-tastic films, so I guess this is just his thing. But it need not be YOUR thing. So unless you’re absolutely OBSESSED with killer doll movies and you treat them like Pokemon, in that you ‘gotta catch them all’, then I suggest you stay away from The Elf. There are far better, less boring holiday films to spend your time with.

Although, it appears that the film was financially successful enough to warrant an equally bad sequel (Tristan Price must be stopped), so if you like to torture yourself you’re in luck, it looks like you can do it twice.

The Elf is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Elf is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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